Did Batista Lose momentum after his 2006 Injury?

[The Blue Nova]

I always found Batista was over like rover going into his feud with Triple H and his match at Wrestlemania 21. (even as early as August Batista was starting to get cheered.. and building him up to end HHH reign got him more over and people wanted to see him turn on the evil HHH and win the belt. It was great storytelling. I even feel he was as big of a face if not even more then Cena and was the top face in the company around this time. I feel his early 2006 injury halted his momentum and he could never recover from it as far as being the no 1 face in wwe goes. and kind of played Second fiddle to Cena for the rest of 2006. (His first ppv back was losing by DQ to Mr. Kennedy and it took him 3 months to get the belt from booker and finished off the year as Cenas partner against booker and finlay. and lets not forget the infamous Big show match. What does everyone else think. did Batista lose momentum after his injury in 06.?

[Lizuka #BLM]

Honestly his momentum was kind of going even before that because they basically didn't have a plan in mind for him as champion and the stuff they did try kept being snakebit like the Muhammad Hassan and Eddie Guerrero stories. Though they did him no favors in subsequent years with how his entire gimmick became being the guy who got endless amounts of title shots but seldom actually won them.

As for the Booker thing that was just kind of a perfect storm of Booker having a lot of momentum, all of the build making more sense if the overall goal was for Booker to put over Lashley only for the idea of crowbarring him into the ECW run to completely derail that, and the whole feud kind of just being loosely based on a wink-wink-nudge-nudge acknowledgement of them getting into a real fight without ever actually bringing it up.

[Jindrak Mark]

His return was rough until the Undertaker match at Wrestlemania 23. 2006 was not a good year for him at all.

He started a fight with Booker at a promotional shoot and got his ass kicked. I’m just projecting, I don’t know if this is actually the case, but I always wondered if that hurt his ego/confidence and helped explain his poor performances that year. 2005 Batista came across as so sure of himself and the coolest guy in the room but for a while after his return he almost seemed hesitant and nervous. Of course it could simply have been him worrying about getting injured again.

His matches sucked for the most part and fans were turning on him. His first match back against Kennedy at GAB was really weird. The heel Kennedy was busted open by Batista and bravely fought on until Batista got himself DQ’d and everyone was booing him. Then there was the debacle at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Big Show, Cena, Orton and all the other WWE guys who got booed by the ECW crowd took it in their stride and seemed to enjoy it but Batista acted like a big baby.

The Booker feud was terrible. The Summerslam match was so bad that the crowd again turned on Batista. Whenever there’s a thread about wrestlers with no chemistry these two should always be brought up. Whether their backstage heat was the cause of it or not, once they saw how bad the Summerslam match was they should have done a rematch on TV to quickly blowoff the feud but they dragged it on months and by the end of it Batista was ice cold. Him finally winning at Survivor Series was such a boring match and got a muted reaction when it should have been a major feel-good moment with the big babyface regaining the title in the same building he had to relinquish it earlier in the year.

He wasn’t drawing as well as he was in 2005 either which apparently was getting to him as he had made a big deal when he was first drafted to Smackdown and got heat for criticizing the roster in a newspaper interview, saying the Smackdown guys were too complacent taking a backseat to Raw and he was going to help them beat Raw. Then in the end Cena was being brought over for special appearances on Smackdown TV and PPV in an attempt to boost ratings/buys because the Batista/Booker feud had tanked business.

The Undertaker feud was badly needed. And what’s funny is people at the time were expecting Batista’s rut to continue and for it to be a boring, plodding big man match but they ended up having amazing chemistry and surprised everyone with a MOTYC then had an awesome feud for the rest of the year.

[4real]

He seemed very cool in 2005 as babyface Champion almost like Wardlow is now.

Once he came back from injury his character basically became “I WANT MY TITLE REMATCH NOW WAAAAAA!!!!” every month. He lost that coolness factor that the HHH storyline gave him. Thankfully his matches with Taker in 07 made him more bearable but he was constantly in the title scene and it was starting to get long in the tooth.

[Limity (BLM)]

I was heavily into Smackdown at this time, as it had finally switched to a channel I could watch, and I was loving it.

The show and the storylines continued on seamlessly without Batista, with Kane coming over and building up MVP and Kennedy and them playing off Undertaker and Benoit and Kng Booker.

Batista suddenly coming back and being forced into the show was very jarring and inorganic, and he suffered because of it. Smackdown was doing so well they didn't need him. Like everyone else said, it took the Undertaker feud for him to get his sea legs back.

Damn I really miss 2006 Smackdown.

[lucas_lee]

To me has got his mojo back a bitafter Taker. Also being on here when he was active, his matches was often seen as slow and plodding. The CM Punk program wasn't that bad but for some reason he couldn't put the storytelling aspect with the in ring part. He had the gall to make fun of AJ Styles TNA workrate. I think during his return he finally put all of it together. But his main event run was uneven.

[Hypnosis]

I still remember this goofy line to Booker:"You want your body buried, or cremated?"

Batista also had some really generic black trunks after his return from injury with just the letter "B" on the back of them, so that was the cherry on top of Batista's mediocrity at that time until the Taker feud.

[Aceorton]

Jul 5, 2022 14:56:28 GMT -5 Hypnosis said:

Batista also had some really generic black trunks after his return from injury with just the letter "B" on the back of them

It stood for "basketball."

[eJm]

Batista around that time was such a weird cat because watching week to week, I was convinced the creative team really wanted him to be heel because there was a point where he’d be the biggest dick to people and say things that weren’t exactly “tweener” and more just a really big bully.

And it was weirder when you had Cena on the other channel who, even with him not really having a defined character for a very long time, not usually being an asshole to people. This was before the time they really wanted him to be Austin, Rock and Hogan depending on the week and storyline.

[tirtefaa]

Once he went to Smackdown to be the #2 babyface, I think it was inevitable that he was going to maintain what he had going.